As U.S. and South Korean negotiators work to implement their new trade agreement, policymakers in Washington should be asking a simple but uncomfortable question: is it mathematically possible for the deal to be a net win for the U.S. if it fails to protect the single largest source of U.S. commercial revenue in the Korean market?
That source is digital services, encompassing services as varied as app stores, online video, location-based services and e-commerce, including notable standout Coupang, which all help offset Korea’s ballooning surplus for the trade of goods.
Coupang: One Company, One-Fifth of U.S. Sales in Korea
Most people in Washington trade circles still think about U.S.-Korea commercial relations in terms of traditional goods exports. But the economic landscape has shifted dramatically. Digital services provided to Koreans by U.S. companies and their local affiliates play an increasingly large role in U.S. economic interests in Korea. Rapidly-growing e-commerce and digital services company Coupang – a Seattle-based Fortune 150 firm which through its e-commerce services helped facilitate over $5 billion in the sale and export of U.S. goods in 2025 alone – has become the biggest U.S. player in the Korean market in the process.
A comprehensive accounting of U.S. companies’ total market revenue in South Korea that combines cross-border exports of goods and services with sales by locally established affiliates of U.S. multinationals to unaffiliated locals, using Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis data, yields an estimated total of nearly $150 billion in 2022 (the most recent year for which all data inputs have been fully updated). In that year, Coupang, the NYSE-listed, U.S.-headquartered e-commerce company, generated approximately $20 billion in Korean revenue, accounting for nearly one-seventh of the entire U.S. commercial footprint in the country.
By 2025, Coupang’s Korean operations had grown to over $30 billion in revenue. Holding every other component of U.S. commercial activity in Korea constant at 2022 levels, Coupang now accounts for over one-fifth of total estimated U.S. market revenue in South Korea, and has been the largest source of U.S. foreign direct investment into Korea over the past decade.
One company. One-fifth. One company. One-fifth. Add in all of the other U.S. digital services providers collectively selling billions of dollars in services to Koreans, and the centrality of digital services to total U.S. market revenues from Korea becomes even more undeniable at nearly one-third.
The Trade Deal Can’t Be a Win without Protecting U.S. Digital Services Providers Like Coupang
The growth of Coupang has a straightforward but far-reaching implication for trade policy: Korean government actions that materially impair Coupang’s business would, by arithmetic alone, likely swamp any plausible gains the United States could secure for other sectors through a new trade agreement.
The threat is not hypothetical. Korean regulators and legislators have pursued an escalating series of actions that, taken together, would impose severe and discriminatory burdens on Coupang’s operations. Proposed legislation in the National Assembly including the Online Platform Fairness Act (OPFA) would subject Coupang to platform-specific obligations that do not apply equally to Korean-owned competitors. Enforcement actions by Korean authorities, including the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC), have targeted Coupang’s business practices in ways that major domestic retailers have not faced for comparable conduct. The cumulative effect of these measures, if fully implemented, would substantially constrain Coupang’s growth trajectory and could force significant restructuring of its Korean operations.
Consider what this means in dollar terms for the U.S. economy. If Korean regulatory and legislative actions were to reduce Coupang’s Korean revenue by even 20 percent – a conservative scenario given the breadth of the proposed measures – that translates to a loss of over $6 billion in annual revenue from Korea for a U.S. company. To put that figure in perspective, the market access improvements typically negotiated in bilateral trade agreements generate gains measured in the hundreds of millions, or perhaps very low single-digit billions, for any individual market. The entire U.S. services trade surplus with South Korea was only about $7.8 billion in 2022. A Korean regulatory and legislative assault on Coupang could wipe out gains of that magnitude for a single firm in a single year.
The math is unforgiving. A trade agreement that secures modest new market access for other U.S. sectors, as worthwhile as those gains would be, is incredibly unlikely to be net beneficial for the United States if it simultaneously permits Korean authorities to pursue discriminatory actions that crater the revenues of America’s single largest commercial presence in the country. It is even more unlikely if it sets a precedent that allows Korea to target U.S. digital champions more broadly. That would likely be followed by Korean discriminatory actions against other U.S. companies that are also large sources of U.S. revenues in South Korea, which would lead to snowballing losses. Holding the line here is important.
Protecting Coupang Just Means Requiring Fair Treatment of All U.S. Digital Services Providers
This is not an argument that Coupang should be exempt from legitimate, non-discriminatory regulation in Korea. It is an argument that U.S. negotiators must recognize the economic reality in front of them. When one company accounts for a fifth of your total commercial stake in a partner country, and it has become the target of a concerted hostile regulatory and legislative campaign by politicians in that country, it sets a precedent: one that could easily snare many of your other companies in the same sector. Failing to secure meaningful commitments against discriminatory platform regulation and enforcement actions targeting U.S. digital services providers like Coupang would be the equivalent of negotiating a comprehensive trade deal while ignoring the largest sector of bilateral commerce.
Policymakers and trade negotiators should insist that any U.S.-Korea trade framework include robust, enforceable disciplines against discriminatory digital regulation or enforcement actions, with specific provisions addressing the platform-targeted legislation and enforcement actions currently under consideration in Seoul – including proposals like the Online Platform Fairness Act, which would dramatically enhance the KFTC’s ability to discriminate against U.S. firms and impose unprecedented fines for non-compliance. Without such protections for Coupang and other innovative U.S. digital service providers, the updated U.S.-Korea trade agreement risks being a net negative for American commercial interests, regardless of what other concessions it secures.
The numbers do not lie. Securing fair treatment for U.S. digital services providers like Coupang should remain the primary U.S. interest for negotiators as Korea implements its commitments and the U.S. seeks to address persistent trade deficits throughout the region.
